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Country life in an old Mallorcan finca

Finca footwear follies

Glamour isn’t a word that springs to mind when I open my wardrobe door. Living in rural Mallorca, in a valley that’s dusty in the long hot summer and often muddy in winter, doesn’t call for the type of clothes or footwear that I had in my former career as a BBC local radio broadcaster.

Most days are spent at home in the countryside, doing housework, gardening, and my freelance writing/editing work. One of the great things about the latter is that working from home means I can wear what I like – what is most comfortable. In winter this usually means jeans and a shirt or sweater. Today it’s a pair of shorts and a loose top, to keep cool.

Going out

When I have to go to the office of the magazine I write for, or to interview someone in connection with an article, I pull out the few clothes I have that pass muster as ‘business attire’. And I do mean few.

If The Boss and I have a party or other ‘do’ requiring something a bit more glamorous, I have a couple of years-old ‘occasion’ dresses lurking at the back of the wardrobe. Since Mallorca is an island where informal dressing is the norm, and we don’t get invited to too many posh events, the chances are that fellow guests won’t notice that I’m wearing the same dress and shoes yet again.

Seduced by sparkle . . .

So I can’t explain the sudden desire that came over me a week or two ago during a visit to Palma. Sparkly sandals! My footwear is mainly of the practical variety: flatties in winter, flip-flops or Menorcan sandals (oh-so-comfortable) in summer. Our gravel drive does horrible things to high heels and most of my domestic non-writing tasks call for fit-for-purpose shoes, such as my gardening clogs. I resisted the temptation to buy the shiny shoes. For a week. During my next visit to Palma, I spotted that they’d been reduced in price by 10 euros. Ker-ching!

I won’t be wearing them around the finca, having learnt the hard way that ‘the wrong shoes’ can lead to accidents. There was the time I fell off a stepladder while varnishing a door . . . wearing flip-flops. When a flip-flop flopped, I dropped – along with the best part of a pot of honey-coloured varnish.

Then there was the time when I climbed over the low wall to our garden to pick some freesias for our guest room. We’d been about to leave for the airport when I remembered I hadn’t put flowers in my brother and sister-in-law’s room – and I was wearing heels. Going over was fine. Coming back, my heel caught on the wall and I fell flat on my face on the gravel drive, gaining a collar bone fracture that wasn’t identified for six weeks!

My new sparkly sandals will be worn only on nights out. But, in the meantime, they greet me with a touch of glamour every time I open the wardrobe door.